Foundation essay: This article is part of a series marking the launch of The Conversation in the US. Our foundation essays are longer than our usual comment and analysis articles and take a wider look…

It took decades for behavioural economics to break into the mainstream. Now, after just a few years of “bias”, “anchoring” and “nudge”, some critics are already questioning whether it has anything left…

Australian households currently pay the second highest “honesty tax” in the world at $290 per household per year, levied by retailers to offset the $AU1.86 billion in losses they incur from customer theft…

People are notoriously bad at filtering choices - being faced with too many leads us to choose poorly.
Image sourced from www.shutterstock.comJune 17, 2014

We are faced with a myriad of choice in our lives - but an emerging body of work suggests the more choice we’re faced with, the more likely we’ll make a poor decision. The conundrum is called the “curse…

Neuroeconomics is a burgeoning field aimed at helping us understand decision-making.
Image sourced from www.shutterstock.comJune 17, 2014

Whether choosing a dinner, a car, a spouse or an investment, experts now know what part of the brain our likes and dislikes are encoded, how we represent alternatives, and even how we choose. This has…